If you are arrested for DUI in Palm Beach Florida, you will be taken to the Palm Beach County Jail where you will be asked to blow into a breath-testing machine (or breathalyzer) so that the police can determine whether your breath-alcohol level is over the legal limit of .08.  

          But what if you refuse to take that test?  The police can’t force you to take it.  Nevertheless, there are certain legal consequences for refusing to blow into the breath-testing machine.  What are they?

          1.  If it is the first time you’ve refused to take the breathalyzer test, then your driver’s license will be suspended for 1 year.

          2.  If you’ve previously refused to blow into the machine, then your driver’s license will be suspended for 18 months.

          3.  If you refuse to take the breathalyzer test and your driver’s license has been previously suspended for refusing to blow into the machine, then you can be charged criminally for refusing to blow (in addition to being charged with committing the crime of DUI).  The reason why it is important that you can be charged criminally for refusing to blow is that one possible penalty is that you can end up spending some time in jail.

New Hampshire DWI laws.  You may have read about the recent highly publicized case of Onyango Obama, President Obama’s uncle, who has lived illegally in the United States for decades.  What brought recent attention to this case was the lifting of the “hardship license” (sometimes called a “Cinderella license” or “work license”) status from his Massachusetts drivers license after 45 days.  This licensing issue was spawned by a drunk driving arrest.  So if you have been arrested for DWI in New Hampshire, you may ask yourself, “what about me?”  Well if you were arrested for DWI or aggravated DWI in New Hampshire, you won’t get a work license.  That is because under New Hampshire DWI laws there is no such thing as a “Hardship License” or “Work License”, unlike Massachusetts and most of our neighboring states. New Hampshire’s OUI and DWI penalties are harsh and have serious consequences unlike our surrounding states.  If you lose your license for a DWI or aggravated DWI in New Hampshire, you cannot legally drive. 
     
Here is a video report from Fox 25 Boston  that reports about the Obama-uncle license issue:



Onyango Obama has hardship lifted from MA driver’s license
(Video from MyFoxBoston.com/Fox 25 Boston)

New Hampshire DWI Defense Attorney Mark Stevens
Law Office of Mark Stevens
5 Manor Parkway
Salem, NH 03079
1-603-893-0074

Getting pulled over for a charge of a driving under the influence in Long Beach can be a shocking, terrifying experience. Even if you did nothing wrong – or the breathalyzer malfunctioned, or the police failed to follow proper procedure, or you can produce exonerating evidence – developing a good Long Beach DUI defense can be an intimidating proposition, to say the least.

Fortunately, odds are that the charges against you are less insane than the charges against two Indianans: Jessica Clark and Aaron Stefanski got hit with charges of DUI in Fort Wayne, after police saw them strap their kids to the hood of an automobile while driving away from a liquor store.

Not so smart.

One of the witnesses to the event, Tom Nowak, told a local paper how the 4-to-7-year olds got lashed to the car: “with one of those straps you crank on a semi to hold down lumber, they were strapped with that thing, wiggling and wobbling down the street.”

Indiana Child Protective Services have since removed three of the children from the father’s custody and sent them to stay with their mother full time. Obviously, this story is like something out of “News of the Weird” – an interesting oddity, but you might be wondering how it could be relevant to your Long Beach DUI case.

Here are some of the lessons:

1: People who get stopped for DUI in Long Beach often do “multiple things wrong” at once.

Yes, there are certain situations in which “only one bad thing happens.” For instance, the driver has way too many drinks at a party before getting behind the wheel, and he or she gets tagged with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10%. But in many cases, drivers do stupid things upon stupid things, compounding their problems. For instance, the father in this case not only allegedly drove DUI, but he also endangered his children. His legal mess will be far more thorny and complicated.

2: Controlling perceptions is important.

What happened, happened. You (or someone you love) now faces a Long Beach DUI charge. You cannot go back in time and change that. But what you can do is to determine how to shape events going forward, so that you learn lessons from what happened, make reparations to anyone you hurt, leverage tools and strategies to minimize your punishments, and generally try to transform this obstacle in your life into an opportunity to become a better person, a better driver, a better citizen, and more self-knowing.

3. Good legal help — early on! — is crucial.

A Long Beach DUI criminal defense attorney at the Kraut Law Group (444 West Ocean, Suite 800 Long Beach, California 90802 Phone: (562) 531-7454) can help you deal with your situation, even if you made compounding errors during and after your arrest. Attorney Kraut is a former prosecutor – he knows how prosecutors will think about your case and want to charge you – and he can leverage that information and insight to get you better results.